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A day with The Match

By Kenza Chakib, Maker on The Match

We all joined Ogilvy after getting onto ‘The Match’ programme. Our shared story with Ogilvy starts few months ago when we applied and made it through to the fifty people selected for an interview. We were then selected as the six people who are lucky enough to join Ogilvy in its amazing home at Sea Containers! Insane, right?

To explain who we are and what we do is quite simple to be honest; we are six Matchers, three Thinkers and three Makers. Over the next twelve months, the thinkers will experience the strategy and planning elements of the company, while the makers will try their hands at account management, project management and production.

Our first two weeks at Ogilvy were filled with meetings with people from across the different agencies, to allow a deeper understanding of the business, the different teams and how to get around the building. We also found out we would be going on an 'away day' outside of the office to complete a number of challenges. Let us take you on our day out in London!

Challenge 1

For some of us the day started at the London Eye with the first challenge on our list and probably the hardest: get a picture at the top of the London Eye by sneaking your way in. Without a doubt, this one was by far the most difficult and one of the few we didn’t manage to complete!

Challenge 2

At the same time as we were selling ourselves to try and get on to the London Eye, another of The Match, Sarah, completed the challenge of going the futhest by travelling all the way to somewhere in zone 6(!), so completing our first challenge.

Challenge 3

We’re not done just yet… to pursue our next ‘mission’ we headed in the direction of Trafalgar Square to get a picture with a policeman’s hat! Challenge accepted and accomplished with the police officer in the picture too!

Although the policeman was incredibly nice, we found an alternative solution for this challenge in a souvenir shop, just in case…

Challenge 4

No one was particularly thrilled for our next task: give one of the Matchers a haircut. Luckily we had some friends in a hair salon who helped us out with this challenge and taught us some basic hair styling skills (like how not to cut someone’s hair).

Challenge 5

Finally, time to get some lunch while completing another one of our challenges: serving food. Check out Yolanda’s waitressing skills as she happily served our lovely pizzas (they were delicious too).

Have you ever acted out a famous advert? And more specifically somewhere in the middle of London? We obviously chose to represent Ogilvy and British Airways, but please imagine Kenza is younger (even if her height is of 9 years old boy) and on the top of the building!

Challenge 6

Luckily, the Talent Management team also thought of our well-being and more specifically the well-being of our male Matchers by challenging one of them to receive a make-up tutorial. Mark was lucky enough to get a tutorial on how to look fresh and less tired. Yes, before you ask, some the girls were a bit jealous… And yes, Mark loved it!!

Obviously, we are keeping the weird other challenges for ourselves, we are not ready to share them with the world yet… but here’s a shot of Mark walking someone else’s dog

Now our two weeks of induction are over and we’ve all started working in different teams around the building, we are all incredibly excited about the year ahead of us.